Hello!

My name is Kristin and I am a graduate student at Rutgers University. I
am taking an outreach services class and have chosen to gather
information about people who are blind or visually impaired who use
public libraries. The ultimate goal of the class is to come up with a
grant proposal to implement in a public library system for users.  I live
in New Jersey and have decided to focus on the Mercer County Public
Library System.  I went to visit with the women who puts in the computer
sytems for people with visual impairments. However, this did not prove
very fruitful as they have one machine per each library, they never
publicly announced that they had acquired these machines or did a needs
assessment survey before buying the machine which is the V View system.
They don't even know if people have used the machine!! They have a large
print collection and she is hopefully going to provide me with
circulation statistics on the collection.  They also do not know how many
of the patrons may even have a visual impairment.

My question is this :   What types of resources/services do people feel a
public library should offer to a person with a visual impairment? These
suggestions can be computer based, print based, anything.  I feel that
people in the community are being underserved here and would like to make
a change.

Kristin Visokay